1. Patricia Mergen, Bart Meganck, Danny Meirte, Franck Theeten, An Tombeur, Michel Louette Contact: patricia.mergen@africamuseum.be patricia.mergen@africamuseum.be Website: http://www.africamuseum.be Poster presented at Taxonomic Databases Working Group 2006 Annual Meeting 13 to 24 October 2006, St Louis, Missouri, USA Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), 13 Leuvensesteenweg, 3080 Tervuren, Belgium Introduction The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), Tervuren Belgium is a leading research institute and knowledge centre on the biodiversity of living species in the context of their natural environments in Africa, particularly Central Africa, and aims to develop interest and understanding in the scientific communities for Africa. Sharing of information with the countries of origin of the collections, with the scientific community and with the public in general are among the highlights of RMCA’s mission statement. In accordance with its primary objectives RMCA is sharing information about its vast collections through the GBIF network using TDWG biodiversity information standards and protocols. Historically RMCA has published many paper maps and atlases about the distributions of Central African Fauna. In its will to share this valuable biogeography related information in a standard and reusable way, RMCA has been involved recently in several GIS related pilot projects. Compatibility and interoperability with TDWG standards and protocols already in usage in our institution were tested. The results obtained so far indicate clearly the benefits of promoting synergies between Open Geo Spatial Consortium (OGC) compliant tools and standards and TDWG biodiversity information standards. Components of the OGC compliant Deegree Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), tested and implemented in several pilot projects. Deegree version 1 has been used with success for the display of the georeferenced specimens for the EU ENBI feasibility studies. Deegree version 2 is used for the Itinerary demo website of the EU SYNTHESYS project. GBIF DIGIT Seed Money Award (Herpnet project) In the framework of a GBIF DIGIT Seed Money Award lead by the University of California (Berkeley), RMCA is currently revising its African Amphibian collection in order to provide it to the Herpnet and GBIF networks. RMCA has currently ca. 200,000 specimens, mainly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Togo. Of these 130,728 are digitized and 10,109 were already georeferenced. For the revision and additional georeferencing the Point-Radius method as recommended by GBIF is applied. (Chapman, A.D. and J. Wieczorek (eds). 2006. Guide to Best Practices for Georeferencing. Copenhagen: Global Biodiversity Information Facility ) Example showing the distribution of the Xenopodidae Hymenochirus boettgeri (Tornier, 1896), African Dwarf Frog, as currently available on RMCA’s Intranet (Designed by Danny Meirte) EU project Synthesis of Systematic Resources (SYNTHESYS) Network Activity D.3.7: Providing itinerary related datasets and tools (for integration, visualisation and quality check) The goal is to detect itinerary patterns in georeferenced primary data presumably collected during a collecting event. A first validation approach is to use georeferenced primary information from well-known itineraries and to evaluate if itineraries obtained from the coordinates and collecting dates of the specimens or observations correspond to what is known from literature. This is done with several specially selected datasets considered as complete and reliable. In a second step, the defined algorithms are tested and applied to georeferenced primary data available in the GBIF and BioCASE network in ABCD and DarwinCore, where the expeditions route are less documented or even completely unknown Visualisation of the Lang and Chapin Congo Expedition (1909-1915) in Deegree iGeoPortal. Detailed view of a portion of the expedition around Stanleyville (now Kisangani) showing the routes followed when leaving and coming back (Quantum GIS). A combination of the Point-Radius and Incertitude Corridors methods has been used. Step 1 : Definition of the problem. The points and circles are drawn as described by the "point-radius“ method. Only the tangent points a,b,c and d remain to be found. Once these points are defined, PostGIS has the Line function that can draw the lines a-b and c-d. Step 2 : Linking the center points. The coordinates of the two center points of the circles are known. From their x and y values, a direction coëfficient can be calculated for the line A between these center points: dcA = (y2-y1) / (x2-x1). Step 3 : Defining perpendicular lines. From the direction coëfficient of the line between the center points (dcA), a second direction coëfficient (dcB) can be derived, describing a perpendicular line : dcB=-(1/dcA). With this second coefficient (dcB) and the demand that it should pass through x (the centre point of the circle), we can define a line B. PostGIS can than calculate the intersection points of this line B with the circle : points a and c. Points b and d can be derived in a similar fashion. Step 4 : Storing the result. The resulting "corridor" between the two points (circles) is stored not as two separate lines, but as the polygon a-b-c-d. This allows using the DeeGree style functions e.g. for coloring or filling the area. Calculating the visualisation geometries using both PostGIS functions and own calculations A demo portal for itinerary services is now available. The next steps of the project will consist on testing the implemented methods and algorithms on other expedition information provided mainly by SYNTHESYS partner institutions. Finally the system will be made available to the BioCASE and GBIF networks to be used as an additional “fitness for use” checking tool on primary data. The itinerary service is considered for implementation into the Cybertaxonomy Platform set up for the EU Network of Excellence EDIT (European Distributed Institute for Taxonomy), as an online tool to assist taxonomic revisions. The complete Spatial Data Infrastructure using OGC compliant standards and protocols tested on the use case “Itineraries” can be applied to other geographic information related issues in the field of biodiversity information in a with TDWG and GBIF recommendations compatible way. Conclusions and Perspectives